Bola Tinubu Preaches Pan-Africanism
Wonders of Wonder: The man who dismantled ECOWAS is in the Caribbean to preach Pan-Africanism!
This is my sort of reply to the Nigerian president’s spokesman’s press release regarding his principal’s visit to Saint Lucia:
Wow!
So, the same man who, at France’s gleeful nudging, dismantled ECOWAS like a drunken mason knocking down his own house, now wants to teach Pan-Africanism to the Caribbean, of all places?
Fellow Africans at home and abroad, children of Ólódúmaré, connossiuers of Bob and Tosh, lovers of Rodney, and readers of Walter, I bring you the surreal news that Mr. President—yes, the Nigerian leader with the mysterious academic history, invisible WAEC certificate, favorite lackey of French imperialism, the one with a shameful anti-African foreign policy, the Grand Puppet of Western Imperialism in West Africa —has decided to go on a Pan-African mission to the Caribbean!
To Saint Lucia, no less. Yes, Saint Lucia — the island that gave us Sir Arthur Lewis, the Nobel laureate. The same Saint Lucia, where every schoolchild knows more about African liberation than most Nigerian university graduates. That is where the Champion of neocolonialism in Africa chose to peddle his faux Pan-African credentials.
You must think that this must surely be a satire. Alas, Nigeria in 2025, presided over by BAT, has made satire redundant. You cannot mock what is already a walking mockery.
We in Africa are used to our leaders discovering “Pan-Africanism” the same way they discover new buzzwords from Davos and the latest IMF buzzwords. One minute it’s “digital economy,” the next it’s “green transition,” and before you can say “Afrobeat,” it’s “Pan-African Solidarity.” But only after getting a polite nudge from the Elysée Palace. To them, words are meaningless.
President Tinubu, who until yesterday probably thought the “Diaspora” was a new Nigerian restaurant in London, has suddenly developed a soft spot for Afro-Caribbeans.
Nothing says Pan-African love like ignoring your region, watching it collapse, and then jumping on a presidential flight to a tropical Caribbean island to pontificate about African unity.
Let us rewind a bit.
It was under Mr Tinubu watch as ECOWAS Chair that Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso finally said “No more!” to ECOWAS, that French Frankenstein of regional misgovernance.
And what did Tinubu do? Did he try to mediate like a politician or a True Leader in the fashion of Africa of old? No. He tried to act like Napoleon in Agbada, threatening military invasion of sovereign African countries on behalf of… guess who? The same France that colonized and looted them in the first place! I wrote five articles on how Tinubu and his Ghanaian pal, Akufo-Addo, destroyed ECOWAS; they are on my Substack blog.
And now this same man is talking to Saint Lucians about African unity?
Carribeans are among the most conscious Africans you will ever meet. The names alone should warn any pretender:
Marcus Garvey, the original Pan-African godfather.
George Padmore was one of the BRAINS behind Kwame Nkrumah.
Walter Rodney wrote the book on how Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
Bob Marley and Peter Tosh sang truth to Babylon in ways Nigerian musicians today can only dream of, between Hennessy-fueled (mis)lyrics.
Chancellor Williams and Eric Williams, who educated a whole generation of Black scholars before the Nigerian curriculum even removed “Civic Education” as a subject.
These are the minds Saint Lucians grow up reading and quoting. And now, from the misty fog of Abuja, they are being visited by the man who thinks Pan-Africanism is something you buy with export credit guarantees from Paris.
Let me put it plainly: Saint Lucia does not need to be lectured on African unity by a man whose idea of Pan-African solidarity is groveling before the dwarfish Emmanuel Macron for validation.
But perhaps this visit has very little to do with the noble ideals of Garvey or Rodney and more with a Lebanese surname beginning with C and ending in corruption.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr. Gilbert Chagoury, the real president of Nigeria in some circles, whose tentacles are wrapped around every significant economic asset in Nigeria — from cement to seaports, from real estate to railways. You name it, Chagoury has an interest, a cut, or a cousin managing it.
It just so happens (what a coincidence!) that Mr. Chagoury is also Saint Lucia’s permanent representative to the United Nations office in Geneva.
How poetic!
A Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire with well-documented brushes with law enforcement agencies in the United States, quietly representing a Caribbean country in Switzerland, and receiving the Nigerian president in Saint Lucia as a brother in the struggle for Pan-Africanism?
You can't make this sh+t up.
This is not pan-Africanism. It is more like Pan-oligarchism—a carnival of kleptocrats sipping champagne while mouthing slogans from Marcus Garvey that they don’t understand.
Let us be blunt: If President Tinubu were genuinely interested in Pan-Africanism, he would not need to fly 4,000 miles to Saint Lucia. He would start by fixing his own house—or, at the very least, cleaning up the backyard where Chagoury built a mansion.
A Yoruba proverb teaches us that “Ẹni tí kò mọ’lé, kì í mọ’óde.” He who does not know how to manage his home cannot correctly represent himself outside.
So, what is the state of Tinubu’s home?
A Jurassic dog-eat-dog, man-eat-shit anti-people economic policies dictated by the IMF to serve Western interests.
A national grid that collapses more often than his approval ratings.
A currency in freefall, now nicknamed “Nair-ah-ah-ah” for the sound it makes while plunging.
A youth unemployment rate so high it qualifies as state-sanctioned child abuse.
A ruthless and shameless ruling elite more interested in dollarizing their lifestyles than localizing their loyalties.
And, of course, a foreign policy so positively anti-African that it pains.
In short, Nigeria, especially in its foreign policy, is an epic failure of leadership disguised as “progress” in presidential press releases.
Tinubu’s government suffers from a condition I call Diplomatic Delusion Syndrome (DDS). It occurs when leaders mistake first-class flights for statecraft and confuse press releases for solid foreign policy achievements.
How else do you explain the grotesque irony of a man who oversaw the death of ECOWAS, now giving Pan-African lectures in a country whose high school textbooks probably include Walter Rodney as required reading?
They know. The Caribbean people know. They are not fooled by agbada diplomacy. They know that AES — the Alliance of Sahel States — is resisting neocolonialism.
Our people in the Caribbean also know that Nigeria, under Tinubu, betrayed that resistance on behalf of France.
They see this visit has less to do with Black liberation and more with laundering a tattered image while visiting an old chum who has ties to every shady deal from Lagos to Geneva.
In the Caribbean, you can’t fake woke.
If Mr. Tinubu truly wants to embrace Pan-Africanism, here’s a free tip: Start by cutting Nigeria’s umbilical cord to France and her financial hitmen in Washington.
Stop treating the CFA franc crisis as a “Sahel problem.” It is an African problem, a Nigerian problem. It has killed our dream of having our ECO as currency in West Africa. As long as West Africa remains tethered to the economic leash of the former colonizers, no number of speeches in Saint Lucia will restore the continent’s dignity.
You cannot be a Pan-Africanist with your economy’s knees bent to IMF dictates and remain anti-people, and your foreign reserves stored in Paris, London, or Washington, DC.
You cannot scream “unity” when your soldiers are training under NATO manuals and your airports are being sold off to the same conglomerates who funded your campaign.
Mr. President, you cannot talk about “Africa and the Diaspora” while outsourcing your national railways and the commanding heights of your economy to firms owned by the very people whose history of exploiting African labor is older than your political career.
Nigeria does not need more presidential tours. It requires presidential therapy.
What we demand from Tinubu is not a Pan-African PR campaign, but an internal housecleaning:
Enact pro-people economic policies.
Clean the judiciary of political errand boys.
Clean the National Assembly of sleepwalkers and bribe takers.
Clean the economy of monopoly capitalists with foreign passports and shady backgrounds.
Clean the civil service of the rot that makes mediocrity a career ladder.
Do that, and the Caribbean will invite you - no need to force your way in with Chagoury’s help and France’s itinerary.
Do that, and when you speak about African unity, even Walter Rodney’s ghost might nod from the ancestral realm.
Mr. President, Pan-Africanism is not a slogan to be worn like an Aso Ebi for international summits.
It is not a decorative banner for diplomatic photos.
It is a spiritual, political, and economic commitment to the liberation of Black people — from Lagos to Luanda, from Castries to Cape Town.
It is not something you fake with press releases. It is something you live with courage, and is transparent to genuine Pan-Africanists.
So until Mr. Tinubu proves he understands this-until he stops using Nigeria as collateral for personal power and foreign favors-let him stay away from Saint Lucia and the rest of the proud African Diaspora.
We’ve had enough plantation managers in agbada.
We don’t need one more pretending to be Marcus Garvey’s grandson while carrying Macron’s lunchbox.
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Polemicist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Chronicler of collapsing empires.)
My Mission: Stultitia Delenda Est - Stupidity Must be Destroyed!
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